Value Bearing Items (“VBI”) include among other things, postage, coupons, tickets, gift certificates, currency, money orders, vouchers and the like. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/975,532 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING COMPUTER-BASED POSTAGE STAMPS” (hereinafer referred to as the “Generic VBI Invention”), the contents and disclosures of which have previously been incorporated in full herein, discloses systems and methods for the creation of generic VBI postage, such that no intended recipient address need be specified, verified or indicated in any way on the created postage. The systems and methods disclosed in the Generic VBI Invention provided for the generation and printing of generic VBI, such as postage, that may be used at any time for any recipient, much like pre-printed postage printed and sold by the U.S. Postal Service (“USPS”). The term generic postage as used herein refers to postage that is non-recipient specific and/or non-date specific.
The Generic VBI Invention disclosed a user interface via which a user could enter postage specifications, such as a mail class and an amount; the user could specify a starting location and a number of labels on a multi-part label set. Herein, reference to a label set includes single-feed sheet labels and label rolls. The user interface disclosed in the Generic Postage Application did not provide for user-varied postage specifications for individual labels on a multi-part label set. If a user wanted to print different postage amounts or specify different mail classes on various labels on a multi-part label set, the user would need to print each set of specifications separately, each time, re-feeding the multi-part label set through the user's printer.
The Generic VBI Invention disclosed the generation and printing of a horizontally-oriented generic postage stamp such that a machine-readable two-dimensional (“2-D”) barcode is printed side-by-side with visually-readable postage indicia. When a mailpiece is mailed, the USPS “cancels” the stamps applied to the mailpiece—that is, the USPS applies an ink-bearing stamp, or other stamp, across the postage stamp to indicate the date of postage and to further indicate that the postage stamp has been used and cannot be used again. USPS cancellation of the horizontally-oriented postage stamp often results in the ink-bearing, or other type, cancellation stamp over-writing the machine-readable 2-D barcode. Such over-writing can obscure the machine-readable 2-D barcode or render the machine-readable 2-D barcode inaccurate or unreadable.